Mumbai: The Bombay High Court has refused to stay an interim order barring Reliance Industries from selling gas from its KG basin fields to any other entity except the Anil Ambani group and NTPC but allowed the government to go ahead with fixing the gas price.

A division bench of Justices J N Patel and Amjad Sayed adjourned hearing on RIL''s appeal for eight weeks to allow a single bench court to complete hearing on the plea filed by Anil Ambani''s RNRL that sought to prevent the Mukesh Ambani firm from creating third party interest on RIL''s gas assets.

The single judge bench had in an interim order in May barred RIL from selling 40 million standard cubic meters per day (mmscmd) of gas, half of the projected output from KG fields, to anyone other than RNRL and NTPC.

However, after reports of RIL inviting price bids from customers emerged, RNRL again approached the court and the single bench in June barred RIL from creating third party interest on the entire volume.

The division bench refused relief to RIL on the interim order but said "we do not find anything in the impugned (previous) orders which prevent central government from going ahead in the matter of price fixation under the production sharing contract between the central government and the appellant (RIL)".

The price discovery undertaken by RIL, which is being examined by government, would continue.

RNRL''s original appeal would be heard by the single bench from July 19 and RIL has the right to appeal to the division bench in case it is aggrieved by the final verdict.

RIL had challenged an interim order by Justice A M Khanvilkar restraining it from selling 40 million standard cubic meters of gas per day to be produced in Krishna Godavari gas field, which RNRL says has been committed to it for its power plants.

In May, Khanvilkar had restrained RIL from entering into any contract for supplying to a third party the 28 mmscmd committed by RIL to RNRL under the demerger scheme. The court had also directed RIL would not sell the 12 mmscmd, to be supplied to RNRL if RIL''s deal with the NTPC fell through.

RNRL has alleged that due to lack of commitment to supply the gas on RIL''s part its 7480 MW Dadri power project could not be set up.